Flutter Engine

The underlying software development kit powering Flutter, Google‘s UI toolkit for crafting natively compiled applications for mobile, web, and desktop from a single codebase. The Flutter Engine is written primarily in C++ and supports rendering, I/O, and plugin architecture.

You will find this term commonly used in Software Development

Flutter SDK

A popular open–source framework by Google for building natively compiled applications for mobile, web, and desktop from a single codebase. It provides a fast and expressive way for developers to build user interfaces.

You will find this term commonly used in Software Development

Flutter Widgets

The core building blocks of the Flutter framework, used to create and manage the user interface in mobile and web applications developed with Flutter.

You will find this term commonly used in Software Development, Mobile Development

Flyweight Pattern

A software design pattern that minimizes memory use by sharing as much data as possible with related objects; it is particularly useful in the creation of large numbers of objects.

You will find this term commonly used in Software Development, Design Patterns

FM Radio Data System (RDS)

A communications protocol standard for embedding small amounts of digital information in conventional FM radio broadcasts.

You will find this term commonly used in Multimedia, Broadcasting

FMEA (Failure Modes and Effects Analysis)

A step–by–step approach for identifying all possible failures in a design, a manufacturing or assembly process, or a product or service. It is used to determine the effect of failures on system reliability and to identify the parts that are most in need of change.

You will find this term commonly used in General IT, Quality Assurance

Focused Crawling

A web crawling technique that uses algorithms to download only web pages that are relevant to a predefined set of topics.

You will find this term commonly used in Web Technologies, AI

Fog Computing

An architectural extension of cloud computing, which involves the deployment of data handling resources and application services closer to the edge of the network, to improve efficiency and reduce the amount of data that needs to move across the network.

You will find this term commonly used in Cloud Computing, Networking

Fog Layer

An architectural layer in fog computing that distributes computing, storage, and networking services closer to end devices, along the cloud–to–thing continuum. It is designed to reduce latency, network traffic, and enhance the processing of IoT data.

You will find this term commonly used in Cloud Computing, IoT

Fog Networking

An architectural extension of cloud computing, which involves bringing computing, storage, and networking services closer to end devices, at the network edge.

You will find this term commonly used in Networking, Cloud Computing

Fog–to–Cloud (F2C) Computing

An architecture that integrates fog computing and cloud computing to optimize resource allocation and processing across cloud–to–edge environments.

You will find this term commonly used in Cloud Computing, Networking

Forensic Analysis

The process of examining digital media in a forensically sound manner with the aim of identifying, preserving, recovering, analyzing, and presenting facts and opinions about the digital information.

You will find this term commonly used in Cybersecurity, Legal

Forensics (Digital)

The process of uncovering and interpreting electronic data. The goal of digital forensics is to preserve any evidence in its most original form while performing a structured investigation by collecting, identifying, and validating the digital information for the purpose of reconstructing past events.

You will find this term commonly used in Security, Cybersecurity

Fork (in Software Development)

The act of creating a new project from the source code of an existing software project. Forking allows developers to develop the software independently from the original codebase, often leading to divergent features or entirely new projects.

You will find this term commonly used in Software Development

Fork Bomb

A type of denial–of–service attack where a process continuously replicates itself to exhaust the available system resources.

You will find this term commonly used in Cybersecurity, System Performance

Forking (Software Development)

The process of creating a copy of an existing project or source code from one software development environment to another, often to develop it in a new direction.

You will find this term commonly used in Software Development, Open Source

Form Factor

In design, the form factor of a piece of electronic equipment is its size, shape, and other physical specifications. Different form factors are often more or less suitable for various applications.

You will find this term commonly used in Hardware, General IT

Form–Based Code Injection

A security vulnerability where an attacker can insert malicious code into forms within web applications to exploit backend systems.

You will find this term commonly used in Cybersecurity, Web Development

Formal Methods

Techniques used in computer science to apply rigorous mathematical methods for the specification, development, and verification of software and hardware systems.

You will find this term commonly used in Software Development, System Verification

Formal Verification

The process of using mathematical methods to prove or disprove the correctness of a system‘s algorithms with respect to a certain formal specification or property.

You will find this term commonly used in Cybersecurity, AI

Formware

Malicious software that specifically targets the firmware of devices to embed itself deeply in the system, often evading traditional antivirus solutions.

You will find this term commonly used in Cybersecurity

Forward Chaining

An algorithm used in artificial intelligence, where inference rules are applied to the known data to extract more data until a goal is reached.

You will find this term commonly used in AI, Logic Programming

Forward Engineering

The traditional process of moving from high–level abstractions and logical, implementation–independent designs to the physical implementation of a system.

You will find this term commonly used in Software Development, Systems Engineering

Forward Error Correction (FEC)

A technique used in data transmission where the sender adds redundant data to its messages. This allows the receiver to detect and correct errors without needing to request retransmission of data, improving the reliability of communication channels.

You will find this term commonly used in Networking, Data Communication

Forward Lookup Zone

In DNS (Domain Name System), a part of the DNS database that maps domain names to IP addresses. Forward lookup zones are used to resolve human–readable domain names into machine–readable IP addresses.

You will find this term commonly used in Networking, Internet

Forward Proxy

A server that sits between a group of client machines and the internet. It is used to forward requests for content from the clients to the internet. Forward proxies can provide anonymity and are used to bypass network restrictions.

You will find this term commonly used in Networking, Security

Forward Secrecy

A feature of certain key agreement protocols that ensures a session key derived from a set of public and private keys will not be compromised if one of the private keys is compromised in the future.

You will find this term commonly used in Security, Cybersecurity

Forward Secrecy (FS)

A property of secure communication protocols where session keys cannot be compromised even if the private key of the server is compromised in the future. Forward Secrecy ensures that session keys for encryption are not derived from a set of long–term keys, enhancing security.

You will find this term commonly used in Security, Cryptography

FOSS (Free and Open Source Software)

Software that can be classified as both free software and open–source software. Anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source code is openly shared so that people are encouraged to voluntarily improve the design of the software.

You will find this term commonly used in General IT, Software Development

FPGA (Field–Programmable Gate Array)

An integrated circuit designed to be configured by a customer or a designer after manufacturing – hence “field–programmable“.

You will find this term commonly used in Hardware, General IT

FPGA Configuration

The process of loading a design into an FPGA (Field–Programmable Gate Array) after it has been powered on. The configuration data defines how the FPGA operates, enabling it to perform specific digital logic functions.

You will find this term commonly used in Hardware, General IT

FPGA Programming

The process of configuring or programming a Field–Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) device using hardware description languages like VHDL or Verilog. FPGA programming enables the creation of custom hardware configurations for specific applications.

You will find this term commonly used in Hardware, Software Development

FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name)

The complete domain name for a specific computer, or host, on the Internet. The FQDN consists of two parts: the hostname and the domain name. It is used to address nodes in a network.

You will find this term commonly used in Networking, General IT

FQDN Expansion

The process of converting a fully qualified domain name (FQDN) into its corresponding IP address during DNS resolution. This is necessary for network communications as computers use IP addresses, whereas humans use domain names for convenience.

You will find this term commonly used in Networking

FQDN Hijacking

A type of cyber attack where the attacker manipulates DNS records to redirect users from a legitimate fully qualified domain name to a malicious website.

You will find this term commonly used in Cybersecurity

FQDN Mapping

The process of associating a Fully Qualified Domain Name with its corresponding IP address. This mapping is crucial for the DNS system to resolve domain names into IP addresses that can be used to route internet traffic.